The great
similarity between the skeletal and cranial structures of
australopithecines and chimpanzees, and the refutation of
the claim that these creatures walked upright, have caused
great difficulty for evolutionary paleoanthropologists. The
reason is that, according to the imaginary evolution scheme,
Homo erectus comes after Australopithecus.
As the genus name Homo (meaning "man") implies, Homo erectus
is a human species, and its skeleton is straight. Its cranial
capacity is twice as large as that of Australopithecus.
A direct transition from Australopithecus, which
is a chimpanzee-like ape, to Homo erectus, which
has a skeleton no different from modern man's, is out of the
question, even according to evolutionist theory. Therefore,
"links"- that is, transitional forms-are needed. The concept
of Homo habilis arose from this necessity.

Femur
KNM-ER 1472. This femur is no different from that of
modern man. The finding of this fossil in the same layer
as Homo habilis fossils, although a few kilometers
away, gave rise to incorrect opinions, such as that
Homo habilis was bipedal. Fossil OH 62, found in 1987,
showed that Homo habilis was not bipedal, as
had been believed. Many scientists today accept that
Homo habilis was a species of ape very similar
to Australopithecus.

The classification of Homo habilis was
put forward in the 1960s by the Leakeys, a family of "fossil
hunters." According to the Leakeys, this new species, which
they classified as Homo habilis, had a relatively
large cranial capacity, the ability to walk upright and to
use stone and wooden tools. Therefore, it could have been
the ancestor of man.

New fossils of the same species unearthed in
the late 1980s were to completely change this view. Some researchers,
such as Bernard Wood and C. Loring Brace, who relied on those
newly-found fossils, stated that Homo habilis (which
means "skillful man," that is, man capable of using tools),
should be classified as Australopithecus habilis,
or "skillful southern ape," because Homo habilis
had a lot of characteristics in common with the austalopithecine
apes. It had long arms, short legs and an ape-like skeletal
structure just like Australopithecus. Its fingers
and toes were suitable for climbing. Their jaw was very similar
to that of today's apes. Their 600 cc average cranial capacity
is also an indication of the fact that they were apes. In
short, Homo habilis, which was presented as a different species
by some evolutionists, was in reality an ape species just
like all the other Australopithecines.

Research carried out in the years since Wood
and Brace's work has demonstrated that Homo habilis
was indeed no different from Australopithecus. The
skull and skeletal fossil OH62 found by Tim White showed that
this species had a small cranial capacity, as well as long
arms and short legs, which enabled them to climb trees just
like modern apes do.

The detailed analyses conducted by American anthropologist
Holly Smith in 1994 indicated that Homo habilis was
not Homo, in other words, human, at all, but rather unequivocally
an ape. Speaking of the analyses she made on the teeth of
Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus
and Homo neanderthalensis, Smith stated the following;

Restricting analysis
of fossils to specimens satisfying these criteria, patterns
of dental development of gracile australopithecines
and Homo Habilis remain classified with African apes.
Those of Homo erectus and Neanderthals are classified with
humans.189

Within the same year, Fred Spoor, Bernard Wood
and Frans Zonneveld, all specialists on anatomy, reached a
similar conclusion through a totally different method. This
method was based on the comparative analysis of the semicircular
canals in the inner ear of humans and apes, which allow them
to maintain their balance. Spoor, Wood and Zonneveld concluded
that:

Among the fossil hominids
the earliest species to demonstrate the modern human morphology
is Homo erectus. In contrast, the semi-circular canal dimensions
in crania from southern Africa attributed to Australopithecus
and Paranthropus resemble those of the extant great apes.190

Spoor, Wood and Zonneveld
also studied a Homo habilis specimen, namely Stw
53, and found out that "Stw 53 relied less on bipedal behavior
than the australopithecines." This meant that the H. habilis
specimen was even more ape-like than the Australopithecus
species. Thus they concluded that "Stw 53 represents an unlikely
intermediate between the morphologies seen in the australopithecines
and H. erectus."191

This finding yielded two important results:

1. Fossils referred to as Homo habilis
did not actually belong to the genus Homo, i.e., humans, but
to that of Australopithecus, i.e., apes.

2. Both Homo habilis and Australopithecus
were creatures that walked stooped forward-that is to say,
they had the skeleton of an ape. They have no relation whatsoever
to man.

The claim that Australopithecus
and Homo habilis walked upright was disproved by
inner ear analyses carried out by Fred Spoor. He and his
team compared the centers of balances in the inner ears,
and showed that both moved in a similar way to apes of
our own time.